Passage:
Recent debates in historiography concerning the Transition Debate—the historical shift from feudalism to capitalism—have increasingly focused on the role of agrarian property relations. Brenner’s seminal critique of the demographic model relies on the contextual example of the divergence between Eastern and Western European serfdom during the late Middle Ages. While the demographic model posits that the massive population decline in the fourteenth century uniformly increased peasant bargaining power, Brenner illustrates that identical demographic crises produced divergent outcomes: the dissolution of serfdom in the West and the entrenchment of a 'second serfdom' in the East. Brenner deploys this comparative example not to suggest that demographic factors are entirely irrelevant to economic development, but rather to establish that pre-existing class structures dictated how demographic shocks were absorbed. Ultimately, the Eastern European example is utilized to argue that because economic outcomes are mediated by the localized balance of class power, overarching demographic trends cannot serve as independent variables in historical causation.
Evaluate the accuracy of the following claim based on the text:
Brenner deploys the contextual example of the historical divergence between Eastern and Western Europe to demonstrate that the dissolution of serfdom in the West was caused by pre-existing class structures rather than by the fourteenth-century population decline.
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